Whirlpool's human resources center embraces IVR and CTI

Telemarketing & Call Center Solutions, May 1998 by Smith, Michael E

Whirlpool Corporation is a world-leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. The company manufactures in 13 countries and markets products in about 140 countries under major brand names such as Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Roper, Bauknect, Ignis, Laden and Inglis. Whirlpool is also the principal supplier to Sears, Roebuck and Co. of many major appliances marketed under the Kenmore brand name.

For some time, whirlpool corporation had outsourced benefits administration for its U.S. workforce (roughly 23,000 employees) to a prominent consulting firm that automated the enrollment process through an interactive voice response (IVR) system. In addition, since 1995, Whirlpool's Payroll department had been using an automated payroll module in-house.

In 1997, Whirlpool's human resources management team made a strategic decision to bring the administration of its benefits plans in-house and implement a benefits administration software module from the same company that produced its payroll software. By increasing its technological infrastructure with additional software applications, Whirlpool Corporation's management believed they had the tools to deliver a cost-effective higher level of service to their employees.

Whirlpool was also interested in implementing employee self-service applications to automate certain transactions. Automating the benefits enrollment process, for example, would reduce the amount of data entry into the system and minimize paperwork the benefits department manually processed.

And even beyond self-service, Whirlpool wanted to provide employees the option to access a trained benefits associate if they needed to discuss issues and transact business that required immediate assistance.

State-Of-The-Art, Automated Employee Service Center

Given Whirlpool's decision to bring benefits administration in-house and provide a high level of service to employees, the company established a centralized human resources call center known as the Employee Service Center.

The Employee Service Center enabled employees to speak to a call center associate to complete transactions. To operate as efficiently as possible, however, Whirlpool chose to automate the call center with an IVR front end. The IVR system allowed employees to complete some transactions themselves, off-loading a substantial number of calls into the call center.

Employees whose needs could not be completely handled through the IVR system could transfer to a call center associate for assistance. These associates were able to look up information in the automated Human Resource Management System (HRMS) to answer the employees' inquiries. Answering routine questions, however, required the service center associate to access data from two to three locations in the system. The caller would need to wait on the line until the service center associate navigated through the HRMS, one screen at a time.

The human resources management team's goal was to make the service center associates as productive as possible. If the service center associates could review key data from the system at a glance, they could provide even better customer service to employees.

To develop a human resources call center that met all of Whirlpool's criteria, the company contacted a leading provider of interactive Web, IVR and computer-telephony integration (CTI) solutions.

"We chose TALX as our vendor because the company has in-depth PeopleSoft expertise that would allow us to shorten our learning curve. With TALX, we were reassured that our approach would be successful and delivered on time," said Shirley Pantelleria, director of the employee service center at Whirlpool Corporation.

The self-service solution for benefits enrollment chosen by Whirlpool utilizes voice recognition, allowing employees to speak information into the system. For example, if an employee wants to modify the status of a dependent, he or she would simply spell the dependent's name. The system then compares the name spelled to an extensive database of dependent names. The matched name is voiced back to the employee, "Did you say ?" The voice recognition feature helps speed the self-service benefits enrollment process.

To increase the efficiency of the a,,sociates in the Employee Service Center and eliminate their need to look at multiple screens to gain data :bout each caller, Whirlpool utilizeti screen pops," which directly interface with the company's HRMS on a DB? mainframe database.

How Calls Are Processed

All calls into Whirlpool Corporaion's Employee Service Center are funneled through the voice recognition system, which prompts callers to enter their Social Security Number (SSN) using the telephone keypad. When callers want to speak to a service center associate, the CTI solution uses the SSN to search several locations of the HRMS database for pertinent information about the caller; then the CTI solution formats this data into one concise custom panel of employee information. The CTI solution delivers the screen of information to the service center associate's desktop PC at the same time the phone call is transferred to the associate, creating a "screen pop."